Public firms invested more than $6 billion in various blockchain companies between September 2021 and June 2022, 25% of which was invested by Google.
Google invested more than $1.5 billion through its parent company Alphabet in blockchain companies Fireblocks, Dapper Labs, Voltage, and the crypto conglomerate Digital Currency Group. Therefore, Google led the top 40 largest crypto investors among public companies. This is reported by Blockdata analysts.
Notably, Google’s investments in the crypto space from September 2021 to June 2022 increased by 60% compared to the figures of the previous similar period. Thus, from December 2020 to September 2021, the corporation invested only $601.4 million in blockchain companies.
According to the Blockdata report, the ranking of large public companies investing in various blockchain projects also included:
- Blackrock. The international investment company put $1.2 billion into Circle, FTX, and Anchorage Digital;
- Morgan Stanley. The financial conglomerate invested $1.1 billion in crypto projects Figment and NYDIG;
- Samsung Group. The South Korean chaebol invested $979 million in 13 different blockchain startups, including Dank Bank, Aleo, and Flowcarbon;
- Goldman Sachs. One of the world’s largest investment banks had $698 million invested in crypto companies Certik, CoinMetrics, Elwood, BlockDaemon, and Anchorage Digital;
- The Bank of New York Mellon (BNY Mellon). The U.S. holding company invested $690 million in blockchain companies Talos, CoinMetrics, and Fireblocks;
- PayPal. An eBay subsidiary invested $650 million in Talos, LayerZero, TRM, and Anchorage Digital.
The report found that a total of 40 public companies invested about $6 billion in 61 blockchain projects between September 2021 and June 2022. The main areas of focus for these cryptocurrency companies are:
- NFT-based art (19 companies);
- crypto-asset selling and buying markets and NFTs (12 companies);
- gaming services and GameFi (11 companies);
- blockchain development services (7 companies);
- cryptocurrency project infrastructure development (5 companies);
- development of dApps, smart contracts, tokenization, and scaling solutions (4 companies);
- depository solutions and credit protocols (3 companies).
Moreover, the popularity of various NFT projects among large investors is mainly due to the increasing number of companies willing to start a business related to NFTs. For example, the number of trademark applications related to non-fungible tokens increased by 1,026% in 2022.
The GameFi market attracts investors by the potential average annual growth rate of the Play-to-Earn segment, which, according to the latest data, can grow by 20% annually over the next six years.
